"But is not that more or less the way with all children?" replied Oswald. "Is it not their privilege to be loved without being specially grateful for it? And then: what is a love which counts upon a reward? Is it not here also true, that he who asks for a reward has already his reward?" "I hope you may never experience that in your own case," said the baron, with much feeling. "And may others never learn it through your agency! You would not say so if you knew what hopeless love is; what it means to carry about in you the feeling that your love, true, warm love, is returned with indifference and coldness! No, no! A heart that loves us is a treasure which we must not despise, and if we owned every heart in the world; to have pained a heart that loves us is a recollection which sears our conscience, and which no new love can ever extinguish." "And have _you_ had such experience?" "Unfortunately I have! I have formed and broken many ties of love, without feeling any remorse about it. I knew too well that I would not break the dear hearts! Only once--I was quite young yet, and that must be my excuse, if there can be one--only once I became guilty of the crime of rewarding a woman, who I knew loved me truly and faithfully, with vile ingratitude. The story would be ever present to my mind, even if the Brown Countess had not recalled it to me in a strange way. Did I not tell you how I met, quite accidentally, many years ago and far away in Hungary, a gypsy girl----" "Yes," said Oswald, "I recollect your story very well. Baron Cloten's arrival interrupted you. I forgot afterwards to ask you for the continuation. Was it not this way? You were on a visit to a friend whom you had known in Vienna. You found the girl in a gypsy camp, as you were roaming through the woods far from the house. The band had gone away and left her behind. To see her and to love her was one. You spent several days with her in romantic bliss. The story ended with the following tableau: A gypsy encampment in the forest--sunset--under the overhanging shelter of a broad, branching beech-tree, a loving pair on a soft moss carpet----"